HOW I GOT AMNESTY, DISCOVERING THE GREAT SOUTH WEST - AND WHAT AIDS IS

Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Mexican Border Crossing

My Uncle's House, Santa Fe, NM

In 1981, after I made my decision not to return to Hungary I flew to Santa Fe from San Francisco. I stayed at my uncle’s house and started working at a silk screen printing shop. I worked under different names; changing my identity frequently. My employer was not afraid to employ an undocumented alien; however, years later, when I needed to have a witness to testify that I was here illegally, he totally chickened out. Some of you may remember that the amnesty of the 1980s legalizing all aliens who entered the US illegally before December 31, 1981. Of course, catch 22 applied, you had to be able to prove that you were illegal, and that you entered before said date. I was on the deportation list for nine more years, just because I could not prove I was illegal. Mind you, there was plenty of proof of me being here, I just could not prove that I broke the law!

Unlce's Back Yard

At the T-shirt printing factory I was only trusted to do inventory, count out orders and do heat transfers on baseball hats. The prints usually said clever things like: “Where the hell is Roswell, NM”, “High on Santa Fe”. They were all designed by Steve, who worked there 4-6 hours a day. Jerry ran the shop and his wife helped out occasionally. Once, when we did our inventory, we counted “Beefy Hanes” T-shirt, and the count was over one thousand. She confided in me that she did not know how to write a number greater than a thousand, but she begged me not to tell the owner! As if he did not know! I learnt about the assassination of Anwar Sadat while working in that shop in 115 degree heat. It was a bad day.

New Mexico

I biked to work every day on my cousin’s bike, which was a bit small for me, especially when I had to go uphill at 4 pm in the pouring rain, day after day. It rained every day in August between 4 and 4:30 pm. By the end of the summer I had enough money to buy my first car, a boat on four wheels, a 1973 Buick Le Sable. In September I started college in Santa Fe, just to get some courses under my belt before I could go to the University of NM to get my MBA the following year.

I moved to Albuquerque in January 1982, took a couple of undergraduate classes for one semester because my GMAT score was not high enough to start the MBA program. After completing Calculus and Micro Economics classes that were actually graduate level courses, I was able to transfer to the MBA program. I also took German. Who knows why I was so dumb to pick German instead of Spanish? My classmates have difficulties pronouncing the letter “ü”, which of course for me was a natural sound. But what was even more interesting, that they not only did not know how to say it, they actually did not even hear that it was different from „u”.  One of our exercises was to read and translate a short text in class. I finished my portion and noticed that all eyes were fixated on me; my classmates were staring at me like I came directly from the Moon. Then the coin had dropped! I translated German to Hungarian! Causing even more surprise was when that the professor smiled and said: “That was correct”. Tuned out she was from Austria and she understood some Hungarian!

International Students
with Ioanna, Claudia, me and Gyuri
in New Mexico

I stayed in the undergraduate dorm for the first semester; my roommate was Tim, a tall good looking black dude. Tim had a beautiful and smart black girlfriend but I think that his main purpose in life was to sleep with as many white girls as he could manage. But when I wanted to go out dancing (not sleeping) with a black girl, he told me he was OK by this, but the “brothers” may not like it. So I gave up and let Monika, an aggressive German girl, hang out with me for a while. This did not last long, I was dumped summarily.

Before she dumped me she at least introduced me to Ioanna from Romania and I started hanging out at the international center of which Ioanna was the director. I met Shiao Hong at the center.  We had a huge cultural gap or rather abyss between us so our relationship did not last more than four months.

Meanwhile I worked for my uncle’s fast food joint, Hardees; flipping burgers. I got in a huge argument with the manager after he put me to work at the cash register one day. We came up about a dollar short and he wanted me to pay. He said it was only he and I who handled the money, so it must have been me who messed up. I told him I was willing to take a test to see which one of us can count faster and more accurately but I was not willing to pay. He only responded by blowing smoke, showing me who the boss was, even though I knew that the real boss was my uncle, the owner. I quit as soon as I could and started working for the university cafeteria, La Posada or La Poisonada, as it was called. There I got free food and worked with students washing dishes. Cool job and it paid $3.50, a whole quarter more than Hardee’s minimum wage.

I moved to the dorms for graduate students and got a Korean roommate.  His first words out of his mouth when he found out I was from Hungary were: “I hate communists”. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He kept asking me to bring my ex Taiwanese girlfriend to our room, which of course I did not even consider. Later he got kicked out from school because of harassing girls.

I met Claudia from Germany and soon I moved in to her house which she shared with two other German girls. Maybe it was not that stupid to take German, after all.

Claudia at the Grand Canyon

In the summer my brother Gyuri and Juli, his wife, visited us. Claudia and I went down to the Mexican border because they were coming from Cuba via Mexico. So Claudia and I were on the famous border crossing between Juarez and El Paso. I had no legal papers; Claudia had no reentry visa if she were to leave the US. A border patrol came over to us and asked if we wanted to sit down on the bench after watching us hovering around for over an hour waiting for Gyuri and Juli. “But it is on the other side of the border” I said. He said that he would be there, not to worry, we could come back. So we went, sat there for another hour, but my brother did not show. We decided to walk back to El Norte but we could not find our friendly border patrol. Instead we found a not so friendly one. We kept explaining what happened, to no avail. Finally he got sick of us and looked at Claudia’s blond hair and blue eyes and decided that we were not Mexicans trying to sneak across and let us go. And lo and behold, our friendly border guard appeared from out of nowhere; smiling. I asked him where he was, and he said: “I was watching you guys, would have come if there had been a problem”. What problem I thought, but minutes before I was sweating bullets.

My brother Gyuri

My brother was waiting on the US side of the border! Apparently they caught a cab in Juarez that took them across the border without ever stopping. They came from Cuba with a Hungarian passport, but nobody bothered to check them out! Border patrol was at its best even then!

Mesa Verde, Pink Desert, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Diego, Yosemite, San Francisco – and what is AIDS?

Claudia and I at Mesa Verde

Juli at Grand Canyon

It was really exciting to have my family visiting and traveling around the US. Of course we had a minor problem when it came to communication. Funny enough, the same problem still exist when my wife and I visit Hungary. The three Hungarians kept talking and discussing matters in Hungarian, making decisions without letting Claudia know what we had decided. My brother did not really speak English and while Juli’s English was perfect; she often shied away from talking. I kept trying to translate but often failed.  During this trip, the only real long one I took with my brother and his wife, we saw the most beautiful scenery imaginable! I think we all will remember it for the rest of our lives.

White Sands and I



Painted Desert but no Snakes or Scorpions

Leaving El Paso towards Santa Fe we stopped at the White Desert, which never ceases to amaze me with its snow white dunes of sands. We stopped at Santa Fe, Gyuri and Juli slept at my uncle’s house, Claudia and I were put up by Miklos, my uncle’s friend, in two separate rooms. After all, we were not married!  Soon, we packed my Buick, bought new tires, and filled the trunk with engine oil, of which it needed almost as much as it needed gas. We drove to Mesa Verde; one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen. To be honest I am not sure what route we actually took afterwards, but I think we went by Arch Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon. And lately Juli just reminded me about the Painted Desert, where huge signs warned us about scorpions and other insects. Claudia and I walked deep in the desert bare feet, for we did not want sand in our shoes. Scorpions be aware, here we come! We were young and fearless or just plain dumb, but we had dumb luck, and found no angry poisonous insects.

Monument Valley

We saw the Hoover Dam and took a peak at Glenn Canyon before we drove into Las Vegas. We snuck into our hotel room, because I did not know then, what I know now, that in the US you do not pay after the number of people in the room, but rather you just pay for the room. We had little money, we stayed at decent hotels but all four of us shared one room. Except for when we found a motel outside of Bryce Canyon, where to our big surprise we had two adjacent rooms for the price of one. They must have given that to us because we did not really sneak around and they saw that we were two couples wanting to share one room. Honesty pays!

Gyuri and I in the Great South West

From Las Vegas we drove to San Diego where Gyuri and Juli walked across the border to Tijuana. It was an easy walk and I watched them disappear in the crowd of Mexican migrant workers. I wished I could cross with them but I had to wait almost another decade before I could do that. It was sad to see them go but I had to continue my journey.

Claudia and I went to Santa Barbara to see my cousin Kim and my friends Tim and Pam. I did not have Pam’s address but I drove around and found the house where Karcsi and I stayed a couple of years earlier. Some of the original people still lived in the house and they were able to help me find Pam.  We then took Highway One up to San Francisco. Or at least that was the plan but the road was closed. California had more rain and snow that year than in any other time in a hundred years. The road was closed because of mud slides, so we took a detour, but still did not miss the Seventeen Mile road and Carmel. 

In San Francisco I stayed with my Aunt Julie’s brother who had a house on the corner of the steepest street! It was scary to drive my Buick around, because every time I needed to come down on a steep street the nose of my car proved to be too long, I could not see a thing!

Mirror Lake

The first time when I stayed in San Francisco with Julie’s other brother; I was preoccupied by my decision to stay in the US. Yet I remember a couple of details. I learnt the expression holy cow (shit) from Carl after we found out that Karcsi’s ride to the airport broke down in traffic and he had to get up and take him. But one of the most indelible memories of mine is when Carl took us to his friend’s bar. It was a large bar; several hundreds of people were dancing to loud music. And they were all black; Carl, Karcsi and I were the only white people there. I remember finding it extremely exciting and interesting. I had to scramble through all the sweaty dancing people to the bathroom that was at the other corner of the room. Coming from Hungary I did not have any notions about racial tension between blacks and whites, yet I felt all eyes were looking at me as I walked across the room. But nobody said a word and of course there was no reason to say anything. But it was a strange feeling to be so alone, so much in the minority.

Hiking in Yosemite

With Claudia we went to Chinatown where she got tricked by a Chinese restaurant owner. He was about eighty years old and told all the girls that they have to give him a kiss in order to get served. When they did, he turned his head really quickly so he got a peck on the mouth. But the food was good and the Chinese kite flying competition was interesting. We listened to a free classical music concert in the park. During the concert the conductor had a heart attack. But it so happened that there was somebody in the audience who apparently was a famous conductor and he finished conducting the piece. Only in America!

Pride Parade San Francisco, 1983

We went to the gay parade, the first of many I saw. It was one of the most fun parades I have ever seen. But I had no clue why everybody was asking for aid. What kind of aid do these people want from me? I guess I was pretty ignorant or was it still not much talked about in the news? In any case, I learnt about AIDS during the 1983 Pride Parade in San Francisco. I wish we never had to leave San Francisco. We drove to Yosemite Park which was practically closed because of the amount of snow still on the ground in June. Camp sites were closed officially, which meant we could stay for free! The waterfalls had more water than at any other time and Mirror Lake was still there and had tons of water in it. We hiked up to the top of Yosemite Fall without carrying food or water. Then we crashed for a whole day having too sore muscles to go on. We stayed a whole week and hiked all over, walking up and down, under and over waterfalls, in and out of the mist.

On the way back to Albuquerque I figured out that I didn’t need to put on a sweater when I run my air-conditioning, I just needed to adjust the temperature! Still when I got out of the car in Needles Arizona, I felt like somebody hit me on the head, so heavy and hot the air was. I got back to Albuquerque and Claudia went back to Germany.